xxvn MYRISTICA 403 



as in the islands of the Western Pacific from the Solomon group 

 eastward to Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. The Tongan and Samoan 

 groups possess two species in common, whilst Fiji seems to possess 

 its own species, four or five in number. 



The seeds of this genus have long been known to be dispersed 

 by fruit-pigeons. Mr. Moseley, in his Notes of a Naturalist, and in 

 the Journal of the Linnean Society (vol. xv), tells us how at one 

 time these birds in their dissemination of the seeds in the Banda 

 Islands were active opponents of the policy of the Dutch Govern- 

 ment in preserving their monopoly of the cultivation of the nutmeg 

 of commerce. He found numbers of wild nutmegs in the crops of 

 these birds in the Admiralty Islands, some of which were partially 

 digested and others seemingly sound ; and Mr. Hemsley includes 

 the genus as amongst those dispersed in the Western Pacific by 

 birds {Bot. Chall. Exped., Introd. 46 ; iv, 229, 308). In my book 

 on the Solomon Islands I refer to the occurrence of these seeds in 

 the crops of fruit-pigeons ; and I found that the seeds were 

 similarly dispersed by these birds in Fiji. It is likely that the 

 absence of the genus from Eastern Polynesia is to be partially 

 connected with the insufficient protection of the seeds against 

 injury during such a long ocean passage in a bird's body. 



Gaudichaud, as quoted by Hemsley, refers to the occurrence of 

 the fruits of three or four species of Myristica in the drift floating 

 in the Molucca Sea. When in the Solomon Islands I noticed that 

 the unopened fruits of a species floated in sea-water. In later years 

 in Fiji I tested this point, and found that whilst the fruits just 

 before dehiscing will float between three and seven days in sea- 

 water, the seeds sink. As I have pointed out in the chapter on 

 Drift, rivers carry down to the sea an abundance of seeds and 

 fruits that can float a few days but do not imply dispersal by 

 currents. 



Although, as I have above remarked, the localised range of the 

 genus in Polynesia may be in part connected with the insufficient 

 protection of the seed, it is apparent that in the case of a genus 

 found in Asia, Africa, and America we are brought into contact 

 with questions other than those of means of dispersal. No one 

 would pretend that Myristica seeds could be carried by birds 

 uninjured across the Pacific Ocean ; and to explain the present 

 distribution of the genus we must recall cases of a similar kind, 

 such as Podocarpus, where the genus in past ages had a home in 

 the north, from which, as from a focus of dispersion, it extended 

 into the continents of the Old and the New World (see p. 302). 



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